A Safer Promotional Ship for Baltimore : 2 Years After Tragedy, a 2nd ‘Pride’ Schooner Readies to Sail

When the 100-foot Pride of Baltimore II was launched April 30, nearly two years had passed since its namesake and four crew members disappeared in a flash of high wind and rain called a white squall.

After the sinking 240 miles north of Puerto Rico, the operators of the clipper-schooner weathered a critical report by federal safety investigators and the city debated whether to chance the sea again in a second Pride.

The eight survivors of the sinking, who spent nearly five days in a partly inflated life raft ankle-deep in sea water, urged continuance of the Pride’s mission of good-will and promotion of Baltimore and Maryland.

So far, the state has contributed $1 million and the city $500,000 toward the $4.5-million cost of creating a new, safer ship. An additional $200,000 has come from individuals, whose outpouring of sympathy and enthusiasm for the Pride ultimately impelled the decision to rebuild.

Despite the fact that the new Pride has gotten its bow wet, it is months from commissioning. That’s tentatively scheduled for late October, when the ship begins its maiden voyage.

Business Lure

The first Pride provided economic development officials with a lure for businesses with its voyages around the United States and abroad and drew attention to the Inner Harbor, Baltimore’s waterfront showpiece of urban revitalization.

Boston has its nonprofit Spirit of Massachusetts, and California has a boat called the Californian, operated by a nonprofit group that primarily offers sailing lessons.

Still, said Gail Shawe, executive director of the Pride of Baltimore Inc., the private, nonprofit corporation that built and will operate the ship: “The Pride really was the only vessel built with public dollars, owned by the public and used for a good-will mission tied to economic development.”

Its office is decorated with photographs of the original Pride sailing past a Danish castle and under the Tower Bridge in London.

16 Shipwrights

The Inner Harbor has echoed with the hammer blows of 16 shipwrights as the longer, wider and more stable Pride II has taken shape.

Peter Boudreau, one of the Pride’s rotating captains and builder of the new clipper, is eager for it to move beyond the sad shadow of its predecessor.

“It’s not intentionally callous. I’m sure everybody has their private thoughts,” said Boudreau, 33, who was building another ship May 18, 1986, when he listened in disbelief to news that the Pride and four of his colleagues were lost. “You really want to get on with things; do what you do best.”

The shipbuilders, who have placed five good luck horseshoes around the hull and their workshops, put final touches on the ship last month, hammering cotton and oakum threads into the hull seams with mallets and chisels.

100 Tons of Wood

Following a computer-aided design, they turned nearly 100 tons of Central American hardwoods and Douglas fir from the Pacific Northwest into masts, deck, hull and interior.

William A. Beasman, chairman of the Pride of Baltimore Inc., praised the workmanship.

“The artistry and skill in the keel, the knees--they’re absolutely works of art,” he said. “When it’s covered over, you don’t see that work. There’s not a boat built in the United States that can match the quality of that work.”

In designing the Pride II, naval architect Thomas C. Gillmer carried on the sleek look and advanced rigging design of the Baltimore clipper-schooners, the first wholly American-designed vessels. For port arrivals, departures and special occasions, the ship will fire six-pound cannons and swivel guns like those carried by Chesapeake Bay clippers that ran British blockades in the War of 1812.

Unlike the first Pride, the new ship has been fitted with a second diesel motor. Coast Guard regulations mandate that as a passenger-carrying vessel, the new ship must contain watertight bulkheads, which weren’t required on its predecessor. Their absence contributed to the Pride’s rapid flooding after it tipped in the fierce wind, according to the Coast Guard.

Longer, Heavier

Pride II is 92 feet long at waterline, compared with 76 feet on the original, and 3 feet wider at the beam. It’s heavier, too, displacing 185 tons compared to the original ship’s 123. “It’s going to take more wind to make this boat keel over that far,” said Boudreau.

Two years before the sinking, a Coast Guard-commissioned study determined the ship was unstable and prone to tip. The study said the Pride would lose stability once it tipped more than 30 degrees from upright, would begin to flood at 53 degrees and would not be able to right itself once it reached 76 degrees.

The squall knocked the Pride on its side within 20 seconds, and it sank within 2 minutes, crew members said.

After the 1986 tragedy, Shawe said, board members shied from a replacement project as they coped with “guilt, a sense of responsibility. It was our decision that put that boat out there and four people lost their lives.”

When the decision to rebuild was made, safety was the top consideration, she said.

Uninspected Vessel

In a report on the sinking, the National Transportation Safety Board criticized the Pride organization for sailing an uninspected vessel.

“We weren’t trying to sneak into some loophole. They (the Coast Guard) had no reason to inspect the boat,” Shawe said, explaining that only ships that carry passengers or cargo must undergo Coast Guard inspection.

She defends the Pride captain, crew and board for taking care about safety on their own.

“The two captains and I spent hours talking about the risks, what should the communication schedule be. The old ship had everything we could put on it.

Emergency Signals

“What we could have done differently were the EPIRBs,” she said, referring to a decision to equip the ship with manually activated emergency radio signals, rather than automatic signals that can be tripped simply by water on the deck. EPIRB stands for Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.

The Pride II is fitted with automatic devices.

The new Pride may venture to new ports in the Far East or South America and is expected to take its place in the 1992 New York parade of Tall Ships marking 500 years since Columbus discovered America.

At a gathering of such ships for the Statue of Liberty celebration July 4, 1986, less than seven weeks after the sinking, the Spirit of Massachusetts towed a dinghy filled with flowers donated by one of the Pride’s Massachusetts ports of call in memory of the Pride crew.